Edmund Sheffield, the presumed sitter, was born circa 1521, the son of Robert Sheffield (d.1531) and Jane Stanley, second cousin to the King. After his father's death he was made the ward of Lord Rochford and then on 2 January 1538 of John de Vere, 15th Earl of Oxford, whose daughter Anne he later married. Following the accession of King Edward VI he was created Baron Sheffield of Butterwick, as set out in King Henry VIII's will, on 18 February 1547. Two years later he was killed in August quelling Ket's rebellion at Norwich. He was an accomplished musician and writer of sonnets in the Italian fashion. His son John (d.1568) married Douglas, daughter of William, 1st Baron Howard of Effingham, and he succeeded his father as 2nd Baron Sheffield. His grandson Edmund was 3rd Baron Sheffield and 1st Earl of Mulgrave; he was for many years Lord Lieutenant of Yorkshire, Vice-Admiral for York and a member of the Councils of the Virginia Company, acting as one of the signers of the Plymouth patent on 1 June 1621.

Engraved portraits of Sir Robert Sheffield, his son and grandson are illustrated in Memoirs of the Family of Grace by Sheffield Grace, 1823. The 1590 Lumley Inventory made by John Lampton, Lord Lumley's Steward, records a portrait 'of the first Lorde Sheffield Slayne at Norwich', which may be the present picture.